You may connect the behaviors of Integrity-Based Communications as:

• Speaking your truth, with clarity and confidence to create more honest relationships…
• Listening with empathy, desiring to understand others needs, to better serve them…
• Doing what you say you will do, without excuses…holding the space for accountability, balanced with forgiveness, when you or others fall short.

Or as Rudyard Kipling is credited with saying, “I always prefer to believe the best of everybody, it saves so much trouble.”

Kindness Is Honesty, Compassion

This is the year I’m drawn more to this nuanced understanding, with truth clearly overlaid with compassion:

Today I bent the truth to be kind, and I have no regret, for I am far surer of what is kind than I am of what is true. -Robert Brault

I decided to buy a batch of Kind Bars, to freely share the joy of good cheer with small gestures of kindness. I’ll still say Merry Christmas and Happy Hanukkah, along with other greetings of the season. And when I’m not sure exactly what to say, I promise to remember:

It’s nice to be important, but it’s more important to be nice. ~Author unknown

It’s Important to Be Kind

One of the things I’ve learned in 2016: I want to live with no regret for things done and left undone, especially as it relates to relationships. As the year comes to a close and plans are made for 2017, please remember my ruminations and my pledge to be kind. If you notice that I’m not living up to that promise, please nudge me, gentle reader, with the reminder:

“It’s important to be kind…all the time.” -Brenda Westbrook, owner, Kind Hearts Home Health Agency, LLC

To learn more about Integrity-Based Communications and how it can change your life, buy Shelley’s book here.